Another slightly off-color “they don’t teach you how to say that in the textbook” joke, this one about two parents dealing with an unexpected pregnancy in the family. This is really upper-intermediate, not really super advanced, but there will be quite a few new words here for lower-intermediate readers.

You’ll have to forgive me these couple of recent not-really-for-kids jokes – I’m no primary school teacher, and I find that an endless stream of kids’ jokes gets a bit tiresome, and is not as reflective of real spoken language. This is the kind of joke you’d tell with your friends after a couple of glasses of 啤酒, and you have to admit, as scripted jokes go, this one’s pretty funny.

It’s a little hard to get rolling on this one, as the first sentence is a little hard to get past unless you know what they’re talking about, so I’ll explain a bit. The joke starts out: “一个16岁的女孩跟她母亲说她已经2个月没来了”, which literally translates into “A 16-year-old girl tells her mother that already two months hadn’t come.” Once you see it in English, and you know the joke’s about pregnancy, it’s pretty easy to decipher the meaning – the girl hasn’t had her period for 2 months and suspects she’s pregnant. Thing is, the medical word for “menstrual cycle” never actually shows up here – we’re seeing instead the colloquial term “月”, or “moon / month”.

It’s also worth noting that in this reading, 令媛 is the name of the pregnant daughter – that is not really explained.

[CORRECTION: Alert reader Katy informs me that I was very wrong - 令媛 is not the name of the daughter but, "an old-fashioned term of respect to say 'your daughter' which is in keeping with the status of the man as a 绅士 (gentleman)". Apparently, when you assume, you make an ass out of 令 and 媛. Thanks Katy.]

And one last interesting grammar point here is the phrase “负该负的责任”. To “负责任”, means to shoulder your responsibilities and fulfill your obligations. So this phrase means “fulfill the responsibilities that should be fulfilled”, or “to bear the responsibilities that one should bear”.

A 16-year-old girl said to her mother that she had missed 2 menstrual cycles… as soon as her mother heard this, she rushed in extreme haste to the pharmacy to buy a pregnancy test and confirm the issue… sure enough the daughter was pregnant! Crying and yelling, the mother asked, “Whichever scoundrel did the happy deed, you make him come face me!!” The daughter was forced to pick up the phone… half an hour later, a brand new Ferrari sports car quickly pulled up to the girl’s front door, and who stepped out of the car but an elegant middle-aged gentleman wearing a completely new set of brand-name clothes. The gentleman entered the room and sat down in the living room with the daughter and her parents. “Good afternoon!” the gentleman politely paid his respects, and said, “Your honorable daughter just told me about this serious problem, but because of my own family situation, I’m very sorry to say I can’t take her to wife, but I will bear the responsibility I should bear. This should do: if a girl child is born, I will give her 3 storefronts, 2 houses, 1 seaside villa and a bank account with 2 million American dollars in it. If a boy is born, he will inherit 2 companies plus a bank account worth 2 million American dollars. If it’s twins, each will inherit one company and a 1 million American dollar bank account. But if it’s a miscarriage…” At that moment, the girl’s father, who had been sitting silently off to one side, suddenly stood up, put both hands firmly on the gentleman’s shoulders and said, “Don’t worry, if that happens [lit: when the time comes] you can come back again!”